Extraction of geodesic and feature lines on triangular meshes

The generation of feature curves or curve network from the digitized points of an object is very important for successful surface reconstruction. Owing to the shape complexity of industrial parts and the random nature of scanned points, the feature curves detected are generally not smooth or accurate enough for the subsequent use. The purpose of this study was to present an algorithm for extracting geodesic or feature lines on triangular meshes provided that the initial and final points of the path are given. The proposed algorithm is essentially developed from a heuristic search algorithm where a cost function composed of distance and curvature information is employed to guide the search of the optimized path. When the distances between the points dominate the cost function, it will result in a geodesic path between the initial and final points. On the contrary, when the curvature cost dominates, the optimized path will track the feature edges or rounded edges appropriately. Successful examples are presented to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed algorithm.